Show Reviews

WHAT A NIGHT!!!! It was my first time at MSG, and I was in the third row. I'm gonna start with the venue itself. MSG, WHOA! THis is by far the best Phish crowd I have ever seen, and this venue is clearly their MEcca.

Now to the show. In Worcester, the band seemed to hold back a bit at times, and tonight would not be the case. Cites opener started a theme to the funk-rock fest that would continue throughout the show. A Driver in between MAze and Bathtub Gin may have been the only time the crowd had a chance to sit back and relax. Coming out of Bathtub was Fat MAn in the Bathtub, I love it. Probably my favorite song from the Little Feat Halloween Costume this year, so I was very pleased. Love Timber as well, and golgi and character zero to close set one is as fun as it gets. The ground was shaking at MSG during Character Zero.

My firend text me during the setbreak and said,"you must be pretty happy right now." Definitely was, but I told him that I wouldve lost it if they closed the first set with an antelope. Nonetheless, that set was as good as it gets. PA goes out during Camel Walk, but it does nothing to stop the raucous MSG crowd from having a good time.

Set Two continues the funk rock fest, and it got real hot. Tweezer opener contains that whole idea. What stood out to me in this set was the Theme>Axilla. The crowd really started to create the set list, and for someone with my point of view at this show it was clearly evident that Trey was carefully choosing songs that played to the crowds energy. My Friend, My Friend>Axilla was a good 10 raging minutes that made me go dizzy I was rocking so hard. The crowd pleaser Fluffhead continued to get us all off. This place was erupting, especially when Trey sings "Fluff came to New York." Boogie> 2001> Suzy contains more of that good funk-rock that capped off a killer set two.

Before the encore, I was praying that it wouldn't be a sleeping monkey>tweeprise, and I was still hoping that maybe they would play an antelope. So when I hear Trey play the first few notes of the encore, I LOST IT! ANTELOPE REALLY. Lets combine my favorite set closer with my favorite show closer, and this is officially my favorite encore that I have ever seen. Sorry Alpine 8/15/10, you had a nice four month run. Looking back at all 5 shows on this run, I still think this is the most complete show, however, if NYE set One was slightly better for me, I think that show could be looked back at as being better than the coveted NYE 95 show. NYE WAS SPECTACULAR!, but this show is very complete from beginning to end.

Now this was a seriously awesome show.
The jam really opened up on tracks like Maze, Gin, Timber, Tweezer, and Antelope. Best of 3.0 by far. Best show of the NYE run by far.Trey's playing was loose and fluid--filled with confidence.
Lots of organic band-led movement through the jam--Trey avoided the temptation to become a soloist. What can I say? I really really liked this show. Download it! Have fun with it! It is filled with many surprises.

This was my second show and WOW was I blown away. Setlist was phenominal. Still gotta give it to my first show though as my favorite(although I'm pretty sure most Phish fans always say "your first show is always your favorite"). Anyways first set was a lot of fun. Camel Walk was awesome as well as Bathtub Gin. Loved Chalk Dust torture as well as Character Zero to end the first set.

Second set... WOW blew me away. Tweezer opener was great, but the highlight for me, was Fluffhead>Boogie>2001. Fluffhead and 2001 were the two songs I wanted to hear the most, glad i got to hear them! Loved Axilla and Suzy was fun as well.

In my opinion, if you're gonna get a copy of one of the three shows from the 2010 NYE run, this is the one to get! Both sets are killers, and the energy was just phenomenal! I know, I know, NYE is always great. But from a set-list and performance point of view, I think this was the best show of the three.

You people need to listen to the Gin jam from the first set. It was by far the most rockin' thing to occur all night. I LOVE how fishman keeps the groove almost bouncy during the jam with his ride cymbal work, while it still manages to maintain juggernaut rockout status. Trey wails on this -- clearly the highlight of the first set. It's the most fluid guitar solo jam of the night.

Second set highlight for certain was the tweezer jam.... specifically the quiet automated/robotic like section where they were in almost a "loop" like mode..... this section comes toward the tail end of the jam.

the whole show was a blast -- but these two moments certainly stand-out as the most notable jams of the night... honorable mention goes to the maze shredfest -- not a "jam" per se, but just insane energy. this band is so ridiculous it's not even funny. the whole NYE weekend was dominant.

Every song in the first set was relatively short, but nailed & powerful. Lots of surprises. I absolutely love what Trey was doing during Page's solo in Maze -- he builds it underneath him so, so well. Bathtub & Timber rocked wonderfully.
Then came Set II. All songs were fun & very well played (loved the jamming in Tweezer & Light -- beautiful stuff). The highlight of the entire night for me was My Friend. Sure, no adventurous out-of-the-box stuff here, but the intro was as perfect as possible, & the ambient crushings of the first stage of the solo/jam was simply remarkable. And again, Page was simply stellar during Suzy. What a wonderful evening, even from the top row of the entire coliseum!

This being only my 6th show it was great because in the first set all but 3 songs for first timers for me , finally got my eluded ChalkDust , Quinn The Eskimo was killer and Maze was insane , great sound overall , i still think the PA cutting out was supposed to happen
I called the Tweezer-Light -Theme trio -
The band seemed much tighter than they did in Providence as well & much louder -Crowd energy was insane as always

We rocked out to the web cast and plan to do the same for the next two nights. I loved how during camel walk you could clearly hear trey say "Lets do maze after this." Then at the beginning of the second set he said "Jennifer Dances."

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